It is well known that brand loyalty is an indicator of product success and profitability. Corporations covet customers loyal to a particular brand because studies have shown that the lifetime value of and cumulative profits derived from a loyal customer are greater than that of other customers. In addition, loyal customers are often willing to pay more for a favored brand.
Corporate executives, marketers and advertisers have developed several ways to assess brand loyalty. Known techniques include, for example, focus group testing, psychology-based surveys or predictive questioning. Other measures for assessing brand loyalty include, for example, product market share, brand preference, brands used most often, customer satisfaction, purchase frequency, or frequency of store or website visits.
While each of these techniques provides a measure of brand use, these techniques do not indicate the emotional attachment a consumer has to a brand. Consequently, loyal consumers who are not emotionally attached to a brand may not have a long lasting relationship with the brand, thereby having a negative impact on the sales, profitability and/or image of a brand. There may be other factors contributing to a seemingly loyal customer's use or purchase of a brand. For example, consumer loyalty data obtained based on purchase volume or frequency of store visits may be related to price or convenience, and not related to the consumer's loyalty to a brand. In this case, a change in brands due to events, such as price increase or store relocation, would make the prior data obtained based on purchase volume or frequency of store visits not accurate or relevant to assessing customers' brand loyalty.